


so like fear

by dawnstruck



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Drabble, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Character Death, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 06:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11053320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck
Summary: Hughes is always there in bed with them.





	so like fear

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I wrote something apart from RoyEd! I don't know how it happened or why, but I was suddenly struck by the thought of Roy and Gracia clinging to each other in the wake of Hughes' death, after the end of the manga/Brotherhood when everything has calmed down and their grief is finally catching up with them. Unhealthy coping mechanisms, ahoi!

Hughes is always there in bed with them.

They don't quite acknowledge his presence, do not accidentally say his name. But he is there in the golden wedding band that Gracia never takes off. He is there in the scars from Ishval that Roy only lived through because Hughes dragged him to safety. He is in their guarded silence as Elysia is sleeping just down the hallway.

Roy doesn't quite remember when it first started. Somewhere between the red stone taking his eyes' darkness away and Gracia still wearing black. There was alcohol involved and miserable self-pity, and a hug turned into a kiss turned into a long string of regretful nights.

So Roy's fingers do not linger on the white stretchmarks on Gracia's lower belly, and Gracia never touches the expanse of burnt skin along his side. They both have battle scars of life and death, but it is their hearts that are bruised like tender fruit.

Roy cups her breasts instead, the flesh plush, the skin rosy, downy like a peach. He kisses the pulse fluttering against her neck from the inside, nervous and hesitant each time, yet never saying no.

And perhaps Roy could love her, could love her soft smile and her sharp wit, could sink himself in her pond-green eyes and her bellybutton, could take her out on dates and properly court her if she so wished.

But when he looks at her he sees the Polaroids Hughes first showed him of her. He hears Hughes' voice curling around her name as though speaking a prayer. He tastes the tang of bitterness he felt when Hughes told him he was going to propose.

The thing is, once you have been loved by Maes Hughes, nothing else will ever compare; and all Roy and Gracia can offer are cheap facsimiles.

But. They had both been loved by Maes Hughes so trying to love each other, in clumsy imitation, was the next best thing.

It's always minutes after midnight, never hours, never two days in a row. Roy will never stay till sunrise, will not flinch when he creeps down the dark stairs and sees the photograph of himself and Hughes at the academy that hangs nailed to the wall.

He will leave Hughes' house and his wife and his daughter behind and, a few nights from now, when the whiskey isn't cutting it anymore, he will invite himself over for dinner again and let Elysia call him Uncle Roy. He'll wait for Gracia to put her little girl to bed, wait for her to pour them drinks as alibis and then he'll follow her up the stairs again, fuck her in the bed that no longer smells like the man they both loved, and pretend that neither of them is crying.

* * *

 

 

**“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”**

**\- C.S. Lewis**

 

 

 


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